At one point, you may find yourself – as we did – shouting at the screen as the game takes a turn towards the dark. This keeps tensions high through what is a gripping and compelling story. Rather than constantly trying to freak you out, the beautiful art style and fantastic soundtrack do a great job of settling you back in after a scare, but not to the point that you're ever sure of what's going to happen next. What should be a nice walk down a serene-looking pathway turns you into a nervous wreck as you edge along, wondering when the next "event" will occur, your heart pounding all the way along. Not only that, but due to the number of jump scares and paranormal occurrences that take place, you'll find yourself mistrusting the game. You'll find yourself trying to put the pieces together in your mind and not being able to without assistance from the other characters. You'll be asking yourself if what just happened was related to something that happened earlier. The most immediately obvious are the paranormal effects that come into play. Oxenfree does a great job of baiting the hook and drawing you in to the story as a whole, using a whole host of techniques. This is a heavily narrative-based game for sure, and there's gameplay to be had within the conversations that occur between the stranded friends. Then it all goes a little bit pear-shaped.īut the gameplay was never going to be the focus.
Naturally, Alex takes out her portable radio and tries exactly that. Legend has it that if you have a radio to hand in the vicinity of the rockpiles near the cave, you can tune to some spooky stations that otherwise don't exist. However, close to where they've decided to lay their hats for the duration, is a cave.
They jump on the last ferry to an island with a cooler of beers in tow, hoping to chill out on the beach with a campfire, drinking and being merry until the sun comes up. You play as Alex, a blue-haired girl who heads off on a party quest with her close friends Ren and Nona, her new step-brother Jonas, and Clarissa, who's the ex-beau of Alex's deceased brother Mike.
In order to bolster our attempt though, we'd best provide an overview of the game as a whole. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that we'll come up with a more fitting descriptor by the time we reach the conclusion. The word "unsettling" can be used to imply many things though, so we can't just leave the review there.